A critical component of an effective learning environment is academic support classes in the school environment. They not only act as a compliment to teaching but are essential for the success of every learner. In fact, academic support classes should be a regular feature in the school curriculum and not optional. It should be made available to all learners irrespective of parents or learners requesting for such classes.

Academic support classes are like a companion course for learners and are designed to help them succeed in their academic courses or subjects. These classes have a positive impact on learners as they give them the confidence to excel not only academically but also intellectually. The integration of a high-quality academic support system in a school curriculum is therefore significant as it accelerates learning opportunities for learners.

It is important to understand that the intensity, length and manner of academic support classes differs for every learner and therefore these classes must be flexible, timely, and responsive. These classes include a wide variety of educational strategies, different from what is practiced in the classroom, like grouping and regrouping learners, introducing various tutoring and mentoring programs, providing supplemented courses with study material, etc.  The goal is to make learning a personalised experience for learners.

From an educator’s perspective also, providing academic support classes is a daunting task. It requires a lot of groundwork like diagnosing every learner's learning difficulties, helping them gain a deep understanding of a topic or subject and also making them practice, to acquire proficiency in what they have learnt. To ensure that learners get the most out of these support classes, it becomes the instructor’s job to ensure resolving learner difficulties in a subject / topic and help them gain the expected level of competency. At times, this requires personal intervention and communication between the educator and the learner in order to perfectly accommodate the individual learning needs.

In order to help learners achieve expected academic proficiency levels, Thakur International School (IGCSE & A Levels), Mumbai equips their curriculum with enough academic support classes to benefit learners to meet their learning and experiential challenges.  The teaching staff at TIS (IGCSE & A Levels), Mumbai are trained to provide learners with that extra learning practice through guided instruction.

However, providing constructive feedback on learner performances, counselling sessions, customised work assignments, project work and other learner activities are some other resources that educators use to provide optimum learning solutions in these support classes.

Nevertheless, the reality in any educational system with a wide variety of learner needs requires educators and instructors to thoroughly plan on how they can provide the best support. When it comes to providing academic support to learners, there’s more than the aspect of ‘learning’ that requires attention.  It is the learner-educator relationship; how learners react with their learning difficulties, how educators respond to their behaviour – all equally matters; there’s a whole lot of learner psychology here to be dealt with!

As it was once said by a famous psychologist named Ashleigh Warner – “Beneath every behaviour is a feeling. And beneath every feeling is a need. And when we meet that need rather than focus on the behaviour, we begin to deal with the cause not the symptom.”

In the process of helping learners meet the expected academic competencies and achieve their educational goals, it is important that we understand this philosophy.